


Swan Maiden (Make Me Whole)

by Her_Madjesty



Category: Anastasia - Flaherty/Ahrens/McNally
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Based on Quartet at the Ballet, F/M, Found Family, Gen, Longing, Pining, Swan Maiden
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-08
Updated: 2017-11-08
Packaged: 2019-01-31 00:58:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12665028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Her_Madjesty/pseuds/Her_Madjesty
Summary: Swan maidens are more than beautiful fairy tales, Anya knows; they are the hiss, the bite, the unrelenting nature of love.





	Swan Maiden (Make Me Whole)

**Author's Note:**

> ...do I look like I know what I'm doing? I wanted to grow an idea I had previously started writing; that of the parallel between Odette in "Quartet at the Ballet" and Anya/Anastasia. Somehow we ended up with an AU of Swan Maiden folklore, which, for the curious, is as follows:
> 
> Swan maidens, often initially depicted while bathing, transform between their fowl and human form by the donning of a coat made of feathers. These coats are frequently stolen by human men and hidden from the swan maidens in order to coerce the maidens into marrying them.
> 
> That coercion does not occur in this fic. Instead, the folklore is complicated (I hope). Enjoy.

I.

When she is little, Anastasia walks with her nana alongside the Neva in a feather coat. The white of it is cleaner than St. Petersburg’s snow. Anastasia pulls the collar up around her face, even though it itches, and admires her reflection in the Neva’s water: ruffled crush, dark eyes, brighter curls.

“Have I told you,” nana asks her, “the story of how I met your grandfather?”

Anastasia shakes her head, no, though she knows, and her nana knows, that she’s heard the tale before.

Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna adjusts the brown hood that rests atop her head and smiles, indulgent. “Once upon a time, ptichka...”

Anastasia listens as her nana speaks of a lake, of the sun and its refraction off of rippling water. She pictures her grandfather, bold and gallant, approaching the water’s edge, and her nana, young and smiling, adorned in a dress of white with feathers in her hair.

“But swans are not all feathers,” her nana says and laughs. “We have teeth and strong feet and family to keep us safe. If I had not wanted to go with him, my family would not have made me.”

Such is the story of the swan maiden, Anastasia knows; it is the legacy within her bones.

She keeps her feather coat close as she grows, leaving it by the door of her room whenever fashion and ceremony demand she play proper princess. The coat grows with her, the feathers lengthening while Anastasia’s tongue sharpens to a point. Her wit makes the court gurgle with nervous laughter. Russia’s aristocracy eyes her as she dances with her father, her brother, her sisters; there’s something, they know, that’s just a little off with this Romanov, something about the way she laughs aloud but tucks glinting secrets behind her eyes.

(Late in the evenings, her nana is busy teaching her how to fly.)

Then, Maria Feodorovna leaves Russia for Paris. Anastasia sits in her nana’s rooms, valiantly wiping away her tears while Maria putters, murmuring unknowable things beneath her breath. With a glance towards her favorite granddaughter, she pulls a cedar chest out of the back of her closet and sets it amongst the luggage already prepared to go.

“Anastasia, come here.”

It takes Anastasia several impatient moments, but her nana breaks through the chest’s locks and lets the lid swing open.

Maria’s coat has started to brown with age, but the feathers are as crisp and downy as Anastasia’s own. Maria shrugs the coat on and sighs, contented, her gaze drifting far beyond the Imperial walls.

“One day,” Anastasia hears her nana say, “you’ll join me in Paris, and we’ll swim down the Seine together and rest beneath your grandfather’s bridge. Would you like that?”

“More than anything.” It’s the truth, a truth so dear that Maria’s feathers ruffle and warm.

Anastasia kisses her nana’s cheek before she leaves. It takes several minutes with a cold compress to clear the blotchiness from her cheeks followed by several days alone to clear the redness from her eyes. At night, when her sisters, brother, and parents are asleep, Anastasia sneaks into her nana’s rooms and wraps herself tight in her coat. If she closes her eyes, she can imagine she hears swans gliding through the air, tucking close to one another to ward off the winter’s cold.

II.

A girl wakes on the side of the road with nothing but bruises and a coat made of feathers. Though her tongue unfamiliar with her taste of her own name, she still screams whenever her rescuers, Russian nurses, try to take the coat from her.

“Luxury is not safe anymore, myshka,” one of them tells her, but she strokes the disturbed feathers back into place and lets the girl cling. “You must learn how to let go.”

(Over the next several months, when her boots wear out, her body grows thin, and her heart thunders beneath her ribs, the girl who becomes Anya will know the flavor of letting go better than hot borscht, better than her own blood. Still, she’ll keep the coat pressed against her skin, hidden beneath a layer of mottled brown and a scarf that threatens to choke her.)

III.

A truck backfires in the city, and Anya buries herself in the snow, hands above her head and breath tight in her throat. There is nothing but her heartbeat, a young child shouting, and smoke, so much smoke that she can barely see.

A voice cuts through the haze. Anya shrinks from it, blinks, and finds herself staring into white crests of snow, broken planks of wood, a red poster, and a uniform.

The man – a Bolshevik – is free of wrinkles, and his hair looks freshly washed. He reaches out to her with gloved hands and concern; he says – something, but Anya is too busy counting her breaths to make sense of his common placations.

He shuffles forward on his knees until she can feel the warmth of him. Beneath the layered rags of her exterior, Anya feels the prickle of her feather coat.

“Peace, comrade,” says the Bolshevik. “Those days are over, neighbor against neighbor.”

Anya narrows her eyes and bites back a laugh.

He invites her to tea, and Anya declines, forcing herself upright by the handle of the broom she’s come to weaponize. It’s not until she’s backing away, nerves too sensitive to linger, that she sees the sprinkling of feathers she’s left behind.

The Bolshevik follows her taut gaze, and Anya sees his brow furrow. She darts away before he can stop her, disappearing into St. Petersburg’s – _Leningrad_ ’ _s –_ streets with disquieting familiarity. With any luck, her face is not a face he’ll remember.

IV.

Gleb Vaganov plucks a white feather from a snowbank still shaped to cradle a trembling girl. He runs his gloved fingers over the bristles, then tucks the feather into his pocket, where, at best, it will stay safe, and at least, will be forgotten.

(He stares at it, later, alone at his desk, and ponders the reports of a street sweeper spreading rumors throughout Leningrad.)

V.

For all their faults, Dmitry and Vlad don’t ask her about the coat.

They catch her, one day, in the midst of the palace with her outer layers abandoned as she explores. The wind rustles through her feathers, and the whole of Anya rejoices; it feels like a homecoming, though she can’t think of why.

It’s Vlad who coughs first, announcing his presence. Anya whirls and brings her hands up, instinctive, to the feathers that cover her chest. Dmitry, too busying staring, manages no sly comments, and for a heartbeat, Anya’s almost grateful.

“There you are, princess.” Bless Vlad and his liar’s tongue. “Are you ready to resume your lessons?”

Despite the threat still waging war with her heart rate, Anya rolls her eyes. She reaches out, and Vlad doesn’t hesitate to link her arm with his. Dmitry follows them, two steps behind, as they leave the corner room Anya’d found herself in.

Anya pretends she doesn’t feel his gaze on her neck, nor the gaze of the Imperials, hot on her skin.

VI.

Gleb keeps her feather tucked in the pocket closest to his heart, even when he learns the news of her flight. He pursues and presses his lips to the feather when the night grows too cold and his worry threatens to overpower his common sense.

He’s heard the stories – swan women and their coats caught up by callous men. If the street sweeper – _Anya –_ is one of these girls, then she’s more powerless than he wants to believe; if the conmen have her coat, she’ll follow them beyond France; she’ll be obligated to follow them everywhere.

Gleb steadies himself with a long breath, then tucks Anya’s feather away.

(A hundred miles away, Dmitry inches closer to Anya on a crowded train and readjusts her scarf around her neck. Anya looks at him, confused, and he makes no effort to explain.)

(She needs preening, he thinks, not this confinement. Not this gritty secrecy.)

VII.

The Bolsheviks arrive on the train and shoot an innocent man. Vlad panics. Dmitry stares. Anya leaps.

She does not hit the snow bank, one of the last she’ll ever see. Instead, the world tightens, and her arms spread wide to catch an updraft of wind that carries her away from the train, away from the ground, away from the trees – up, up, until she can see the setting sun and little else.

Anya shivers down to her soul and wonders why this is familiar, why she’s not panicking. How it is she’s supposed to land.

It’s terrifying. It’s thrilling. It makes Dmitry’s eyes go wide when she settles next to him in the snow, her feathers windswept and her neck reaching so she can tap his shoulder with her beak. Beside him, and maybe concussed, Vlad bellows out a laugh.

“She must be our princess,” he crows to the clouds that obscure Anya’s sun. “I knew there was something special about her!”

Dmitry snaps at him, snaps at her, and Anya hisses back. It feels good to watch him shrink, but there’s a terror in his eyes that she finds horribly familiar.

(It takes her over an hour to return to herself, human and shivering and at a loss until Dmitry puts his arms around her, inviting Vlad to encase them both.)

VIII.

Paris encases them in the Neva Club and calls Anya’s coat chic when it warms the gentle pinks of her new dress. Anya holds it close and dances, first with Dmitry, then with Vlad, then with Josephine Baker wearing nothing but bananas and a silver, sequined bikini top. For a moment, she doesn’t know where to put her hands, but the woman laughs and guides her along until Anya’s laughing, too, the threat of Russia and her nana and the world forgotten.

In the shadows, a figure lingers.

When Gleb approaches, Anya has to remind herself that she is in her own territory; these people are more likely to be loyal to her than him. In turn, she opens her arms and relishes the shock on his face as he stops in his trek towards her.

“It’s rude to deny a woman a dance,” she tells him, borrowing Vlad’s tongue and Dmitry’s bravado. She sees Gleb swallow. Then, he steps forward.

They dance to a sound Anya has no name for and has no patience to identify. Instead, she watches the play of emotions on Gleb’s face as his hand brushes over her feathers, arranging and rearranging the disorderly array.

“You ran on your own, then,” he says, his voice tired and cracked.

Anya tilts her head, but she doesn’t resist when he pulls her close. Warmth radiates from him, threatening, but as good as any coat.

As the song comes to an end, Gleb bends his head. Anya feels his breath on her ear, his hand on the small of her back, and despite herself, she whimpers.

“Ptichka,” he murmurs. “Do not fly from me now.”

“I must,” Anya tells him, her heart pounding in her chest. “There is so much more out there; I have family waiting for me.”

And she remembers: a grandmother, a coat of brown and white, sharp teeth and strong feet and a family that won’t let her go.

Gleb growls. It’s a predator’s sound.

Anya glides up to her toes and takes his earlobe between her teeth. It steals his breath, this little half-threat. She feels him freeze.

It’s a powerful thing.

(He lets her go.)

IX.

(And she wakes crying, that night, with the faces of her family just out of reach. Dmitry finds her; Dmitry holds her; Dmitry tells her stories, and Anya knows him like she knows the press of her coat. She lets him wipe away her tears with broad, unforgiving hands while, in turn, she traces the contours of his cheeks, the sallowness of his skin, the lackluster flop of his hair.)

(When she wakes in the morning, he’s there beside her: too tall for the bed and too warm for her to linger, but she stays, anyway, and presses her face to the hollow of his throat. She pretends to be asleep when he wakes, but she cannot ignore the way he freezes.)

(It’s a wonder, the different ways the men in her life fear her.)

X.

Her grandmother recognizes her in the midst of the ballet by the quality of her coat alone. Anya runs to her, lets the woman embrace her, and somewhere behind her, Dmitry stutters; somewhere behind her, Gleb collapses; somewhere behind her, her family sighs and finally rests.

The end of the swan maiden’s tale is unclear. Perhaps Dmitry leaves Paris with a case full of rubles and a feather tucked in his hair. Perhaps Gleb rises from his knees, touches his coat, and finds himself unwillingly retreating. Perhaps the Grand Duchess Anastasia takes a bullet to the back, and her grandmother, enraged, kills the Romanov killer.

All Anya knows is the familiar touch of fingers against her wings; of uncertainties in the wind and the call of her name; of family, sharp teeth, and strong, sturdy feet that the Romantics dismiss and biologists defame.

Swan maidens are more than beautiful fairy tales, Anya knows; they are the hiss, the bite, the unrelenting nature of love.

**Author's Note:**

> ptichka: little bird
> 
> myshka: little mouse
> 
> Let me know what you thought!


End file.
